


The Last Night of the World

by Lionsmane



Category: The Hobbit RPF
Genre: Accidental Voyeurism, Friends With Benefits, Hurt/Comfort, Love in the time of COVID, M/M, Misunderstandings, Musician Aidan Turner, Paris in the Spring, Romance while social distancing, Teacher Dean O'Gorman, boys being stupid
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-07-08
Updated: 2020-07-21
Packaged: 2021-03-04 18:33:41
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 5,528
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25150939
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lionsmane/pseuds/Lionsmane
Summary: Dean arrived in Paris in July of 2019, the ink barely dry on his Bachelor's degree in Creative Writing.  His parents and friends had been worried, Dean knew, that running off to Paris with a man 7 years his senior whom he had only dated for a few months was closer to jumping out of a perfectly good airplane without a parachute than Dean had ever done.8 months later and a pandemic paralyzes his beloved city of Lights.  His love life seems to be at a standstill as well.And what is he supposed to do about the hedonistic young Irishman who displays his professional and private life so openly through the large window opposite from his?
Relationships: Dean O'Gorman & Aidan Turner, Dean O'Gorman/Aidan Turner, Luke Evans/Dean O'Gorman, Orlando Bloom/Aidan Turner
Comments: 4
Kudos: 13





	1. Unprecedented Circumstances

**Author's Note:**

> So many people seemed to be using their windows and balconies to commune with each other during this pandemic. I just wondered how that might play out between two single, beautiful young men who share more in common with each other than they know.
> 
> Enjoy.

It’s raining in Paris. Dean watches the water droplets stream down the high windows of his classroom of the bilingual private school where he teaches English as a second language. Smoky grey clouds roil in the sky above the building tops and thunder grumbles in the distance.

He takes a moment to enjoy the sounds, closing his eyes. He’s always loved rain. Greyness pattering outside makes things all the brighter and warmer inside. The colors of Paris seem richer when the surfaces of awnings and stone shine with water. Montmartre must look gorgeous right now. Just like the postcards Dean sends home regularly to his family in New Zealand, with the Basilique du Sacre Coeur rising above the street and also reflected in its shimmering cobblestones.

Dean returns triaging the pile of papers on his desk. One pile stays here, one pile goes home for grading, one pile for the recycling bin.

It is 6 O'clock on Friday, March 14th, 2020. President Macron just issued a lockdown order for all French schools which will last for the next 15 days. The Covid flu pandemic hit serious proportions this week in Italy, France’ neighbor, only a few hundred miles from where Dean lives and teaches. They closed their schools down weeks ago, followed by their restaurants and bars a couple days later, and finally their factories, in that order.

It does not seem to have helped them much.

Most of the other teachers in the building have left. That isn’t unusual. Dean is the last to leave the building most nights. He would have thought they would stay later tonight, though. With these unprecedented circumstances, who knows when they’ll be allowed into the building again?

Luckily most of his teaching materials are online, so if he brings his laptop home he’ll be able to plan and receive admin’s instructions so long as his apartment building’s wifi functions. But there are some analog resources he’d regret leaving here. Some well thumbed and annotated paperback copies of his favorite classics go into his shoulder bag with his grading. Shakespeare’s Tempest, translated copies of Antoine de St Exupery’s Little Prince and Voltaire’s Candide, and Boccacio’s Decameron. Can’t be without that one.

“Dean! Still here?”

Dean smiles at the elderly man leaning in his doorway. Ian Mckellen is an English expatriate who came to Paris on vacation in the summer of 1974 and then never left. When pressed to explain, he says he fell in love. When pressed further, he shrugs and waves a hand across the cityscape of Paris, waggles his eyebrows, and returns to his wine.

“Yeah, just finishing up.” Dean shoulders his bag and they walk down the hallway towards the science wing.

“Think he’ll still be there?”

“Oh without a doubt. The real question is how much of his classroom materials we will have to talk him out of taking home with him.”

“He’ll have to bring Charlemagne home won’t he? How’s he going to manage that on the metro?”

Ian eye rolls his answer as they turn the corner into Adam Brown’s classroom. The small nervous Englishman teaches Biology and Chemistry and is here on a similar Visa to Dean’s. Luckily for Dean, Adam’s certifications are in science, for he certainly would have won the spot for English teacher to French natives with his French being far superior to Dean’s. A Cambridge graduate, Adam is the most intellectually gifted person Dean has ever met. He speaks and writes five languages, holds degrees in Biology, Chemistry and Neuroscience, and seems to have memorized every single one of Shakespeare’s plays.

Dean felt instant friendship for Adam on their first day of new teacher training, when, during a painfully boring presentation on formative vs summative assessments, Adam nudged a spiral notebook to him under the table with a written challenge; “ _Pedig edhellen_?” Dean had stared at the small man in the burgundy “Global Climate March” T shirt and then had calmly written back “ _Mae govannen!_ ”

So, six languages, really. Sindarin, the language of true geekdom, becomes their secret way of passing the time during dull meetings. It is far more reliable than English since many adult Parisians are bilingual. Dean finds he needs to refer to an online dictionary to keep up with Adam, but it is useful if they are venting about anything they wish to keep private. They quickly found that they had to be careful around Ian, though, who speaks Elvish better than the two of them together. Adam actually suspects the older man may have known JR Tolkien personally, the more they learn of his background, which Ian gifts them with so sparingly.

Currently Adam stands on a wobbly chair, cursing in French, as he attempts to catch hold of a very reluctant bearded lizard in a large glass tank.

“Ah merde! Come on you stupid creature! You sat around basking all day and now you want to go for a jog??”

There are three large backpacks filled to bursting with books and scientific equipment on the desk near the front of the room. Ian sighs and shoves his hands into his pockets as Dean steps forward to help his friend. Between the two of them they manage to corner Charlemagne between his hot rock and the corner of the tank, and wrangle him into a smaller plastic carrier with a mesh top. Adam zips it closed and nods his thanks.

“Ah, quelle affair! Thanks old man, I thought I’d never get him. Is that all you’re bringing home?”

“Adam,” Dean gestures to the three packs on the desk, “You don’t seriously intend to haul all that home tonight do you?”

Adam blinks, taking in his intended take home pile perhaps for the first time. “Um,” he says, “well...I mean…” he moves over to the packs and begins to stammer reasons for each heavy book or item that Ian steadily removes from the bags and holds up. It takes them about thirty minutes to bring the chaos of Adam’s packing down to a reasonable single pack, including arguments that there is no need to carry home books that can be found online, or lab equipment that support labs that can be done virtually. Finally they point out that Adam’s laptop, which still rests open and plugged in on his desk, really DOES need to be taken home.

“You know this business of 15 days and we’ll be back is bollocks, don’t you?” says Adam as they head for the great double doors to the outside street. “With so many cases in Italy, and this being a novel virus, they are going to have to shut everything down for at least three months. Maybe even longer.”

Ian’s forehead furrows. “Mmm. That will go hard on the small business owners.” Dean suspects he is thinking of his favorite bistros.

“And getting on the metro is madness! At least not without proper protection.” Adam pulls a package of surgical masks out of his pocket and thrusts two of them into Dean and Ian’s hands. “Promise me you’ll wear these on the trains and in the crowds. And stock up on toilet paper and hand sanitizer now before it’s all gone!”

Adam puts his own mask on, attaching the white loops around his ears, and then slides a set of plastic safety goggles over his eyes. He looks like a goggle-eyed muzzled ferret. No one else on the Parisian sidewalk appears to share Adam’s concerns. Many stare, elbow each other, and tip their heads back in throaty chortles at the earnest young Englishman.

Dean and Ian finger their blue cotton masks, grin tightly, stare at their shoes.

Adam snorts crossly. “I’m serious! This virus is airborne and lives on surfaces for days! It takes nothing at all for it to take hold in epithelial tissue of your lungs and then you’re done for!”

“Yes, yes, lad. All right.” says Ian as he pulls his mask over his mouth and nose, his warm eyes crinkling at the corners now the only remnant of his facial expression. Dean follows his example.

Adam relaxes a fraction, which for him still looks like a small mammal on meth. “Good. Be careful going home, and when you get there, stay there! I hope we’ll see each other again soon, but I’m betting it won’t be until Bastille day the way things are going.”

Adam leaves their company, walking sans soucie past people who stare openly at the little man with a huge pack on one shoulder, a bagged bearded lizard on the other, and full facial coverings.

Dean and Ian wait until he rounds a corner before removing their masks.

Ian breathes in the fresh air and considers his younger colleague. “We should get a coffee at the Cassiopee on our way home. May be the last time we can for a while.”

The cafe is busy. They take two chairs outside and order lattes heavy with foam, heart patterns floating on the tops and coating their upper lips as they sip. Sunlight peeks through the clouds and warms their faces, and the wet cobblestones smell like freshly uncorked red wine.

Dean checks his phone for messages. One from his mother. It can wait.

Ian seems to rouse himself suddenly. “Hey now. Wasn’t this Saturday your big night at the Moulin with Luke?”

Dean winces. “Yes, our reservation was for tomorrow night. I guess that’s out now.”

Ian’s eyes go wide and he breathes a Parisian-worthy groan of disappointment. “Oh my dear boy! What a shame. It takes weeks to get in there.”

Dean nods. It had indeed taken weeks. Weeks to convince his live- in boyfriend to take him to the Moulin Rouge, weeks to get the reservation, weeks of waiting and hoping as the date neared that Luke would still want to go when the night came.

Dean can feel Ian studying him. It is something he often does, unabashedly.

“How are you two doing?”

Dean gives the standard answer of a New Zealand native, _Oh, fine, we’re doing fine,_ he nods, smiles, stares at the people passing by with their baguettes tucked under their arms, squints his eyes and brings a hand up to shade them from the sun that went behind the clouds two minutes before.

It was a good question. It used to be much easier to answer it.

He checks his phone again.


	2. A Learning Experience

Luke took Dean to the top of the Eiffel Tower when he’d first arrived in Paris.

Dean had been shy about asking. He did want to see it, of course. The uniqueness of that graceful upwardly sloping latticework, the way it reaches for the sky, yet is so planted confidently on its four feet. But so cliche, wasn’t it? A native Parisian like Luke wouldn’t want to go there. It was like asking a Londoner to go see Big Ben.

But Luke hadn’t seemed to mind. That first month together before Dean’s school session started last September had been idyllic. Dean was young, free and living with a gorgeous boyfriend in the city of lights. Luke takes him site seeing all over the city and smiles indulgently when Dean lags behind to read the historical info on all the metallic plaques.

They go to the top of the Eiffel tower, the summit of the third level, where Dean discovers his own acrophobia. He’s mortified. He’s been to the top of the Pacifica in downtown Auckland, for goodness sakes. 181 floors above the street and he’d been just fine. But this wrought iron tower lacks real walls or glass windows to separate Dean from the sky. The floor is full of holes and he can see the increasingly distant ground beneath his wool allbirds; it sets his heart hammering. The iconic tower did not seem so high when he’d looked at it from the ground. By 100 meters he’s beginning to regret climbing inside a machine that continues to rise in spite of the sounds of whistling wind and groaning metal. By 200 meters Dean’s knuckles are white and his head is spinning. By the time the elevator bumps to a stop at 276 meters, Dean is hyperventilating and convinced he is going to die if he moves.

But just as all the oxygen in the world seemed about to disappear, Luke responds by pushing him back into the tiny elevator and manhandling everyone else out with authoritarian charm. “un peu d’espace s'il vous plaît, merci!” Then, with devastating calmness, he’d unzipped Dean’s fly, knelt down and blown Dean as they descended back towards the ground.

Dean was never so happy for the slowness of an elevator. His eyes closed and his hands gripped the metal behind him for very different reasons than when they had ascended. He sees stars somewhere around 150 meters and Luke has him tucked back in and presentable by 100 meters. When the elevator doors opened, Dean had forgotten all about his panic attack.

\---------------------------------------------

Dean arrived in Paris in July of 2019, the ink barely dry on his Bachelor's degree in Creative Writing. His parents and friends had been worried, Dean knew, that running off to Paris with a man 7 years his senior whom he had only dated for a few months was closer to jumping out of a perfectly good airplane without a parachute than Dean had ever done.

He had no odious past to run from. No dark secrets, unplanned pregnancies or STDs dogged his steps. His parents and brother were loving supportive people. When he was 15 and came home from school one day and blurted out to his mother in the kitchen that he thought he might be gay, she had blinked at him a few times, nodded sagely, and then said,

“That’s fine dear. Could you get the plates on the table please?”

His father had poked his bespectacled eyes over his newspaper from the living room.

“What’s just happened?”

“Dean says he’s gay, love.”

His father had looked at Dean with the same expression he’d used when Dean had announced he wanted to learn to speak French when he was 11. He even said the same words.

“All right then. Make sure you do your research, lad.”

His brother Brett was overjoyed. “Gay bars, man!” He’d said, “Girls love gay men! All I have to do is stay near you and console them when they find out it stops with dancing!!”

When Dean first saw Luke Evans in that cafe in Wellington he’d felt all notions of “research” completely dissolve. Luke has the sort of eyes that could pierce through any form of rationality. His dark irises smoulder under brows permanently set at a forward dig that brooks no resistance, especially when combined with the way that one side of his mouth curves upwards with such an air of expectation. Dean has no defense against him. Not then in the last months of his senior year at uni, and not now.

Luke treats Dean like china. Dean was no virgin, but Luke introduces him to a type of sexual immersion that Dean has never tried. They go far beyond the fumblings Dean had experienced in dark corners during frat parties or lucky tent pairings during camping getaways in the Wellington peaks. He feels like he’s earned a major degree in writing, and minored in homoerotic sex with Luke. Dean brings him to meet his family and watches in fascination as his tall dark Frenchman kisses his mother’s hand and talks about the future of Google.com with his father with the same mouth that had been buried in Dean’s nether regions only hours earlier.

At his core, Dean wants to write. Good stories fascinate him whether they are fact or fiction. The few he had written in school had garnered approval. The short stories and novellas he’d penned about his life in a small town in New Zealand had earned a few book awards and scholarships that made university tuition a possibility. But meeting Luke, and listening to his stories, his traveling, his risk taking, his experience of Paris and its endless streets and layers upon layers of history.. Dean is hooked. And when Luke invites Dean to come home with him, _all the way home_ , as in the entire 19,000 kilometer distance to his flat on Rue Merlin, Dean has to force himself not to appear too eager as he accepts the invitation.

Luke has a friend on the administrative board of one of the city’s many private schools, so Dean not only has a place to stay in the most beautiful city in the world, he also has a job awaiting him. School didn’t start until mid August, so during their first month together Dean mostly stayed in Luke’s apartment and worked on lesson plans for his new position. Luke worked at a small tech support company and was a shareholder, so he chose his own hours.

Now as Dean walks up the last bit of distance to their apartment, Dean wonders what lockdown with his boyfriend Luke will be like. The handsome young computer engineer he’d followed here from New Zealand has been distant lately. The apartment they share in the Eleventh Arrondissement is small but comfortable, and Dean makes a huge effort to do his part in the rent, bills and upkeep of their space. As a foreign Language teacher on a two year Visa, Dean could never hope to make the salary that Luke brings home, but he does his best to make up for it in other ways. He cooks dinners in the evenings, makes coffee in the mornings, cleans up after himself in the bathroom, brings home fresh pastry from Luke’ favorite bakery whenever he can.

In their first months in Paris together Luke came home every night and had a new corner of the city to show him that wasn’t listed in any tourist site guide. They had savory meals in restaurants hidden in tiny rues. Luke seemed to know all of the waiters and owners personally and wine flowed like water. They ate fresh organic grapes from the open air markets. Luke offered to buy a bunch of fresh kiwis for Dean, and laughed when Dean admitted he wasn’t that fond of them.

They always returned to Luke’s apartment late, warm pavement under their feet, stars over their heads, Luke’s hand tugging him to the bedroom. Every morning they woke up naked together in Luke’s big four poster bed, legs tangled together, Dean’s ear pressed to Luke’s heartbeat, relishing in the frenchman’s deep spicy voice speaking “Bon matin, cheri.”

Dean isn’t sure how it happened, but something changed in these last few months between them.

Luke began to make more and more use of the living space above his business office, and Dean found himself alone at night in Luke’s apartment in Rue Merlin. Sometimes he disappeared for days, texting Dean to apologize and explain that work had become intense. Even when Luke did make it home, the close physical touching Dean had become used to had changed. Luke no longer encircled his waist from behind when he found Dean cooking or washing dishes and buried his lips in dean’s neck. Now he more often laid his hands on Deans shoulders and kissed the top of his head, then quietly disappeared to read the paper in his study.

Dean felt like he was stuck in a bad fifties sitcom, cast as the little woman chopping vegetables and icing wine and wondering “will Luke be on the 6 oclock train?”

It wasn’t as if he’d had any grand expectations. He wasn’t sure how committed he was to Luke. He was open to possibilities, sure, but Dean wasn’t waiting for a ring to drop. And he certainly did not expect to be “kept” in any way. He earned his own keep just fine, and had every intention of supporting himself fully someday. He was 22 years old. This was a learning experience. Luke was handsome, and kind, and had welcomed Dean into his life. If it didn’t work out, it wouldn’t be the end of the world. Dean would be fine. Really.

He just worried that he’d done something wrong. Something that suddenly made Luke see him as a liability rather than an asset.

Perhaps it dated to the first time Luke had introduced Dean to his friends.

Pierre, Jed and Mikael were at their laptops the day Luke had finally brought Dean to see where he worked last October. At first their reception had appeared warm to Dean. He had received the traditional pecks to both his cheeks from each of them. But he’d been puzzled by the brusqueness of their behavior. Jed, a shorter, mousier version of Luke, kept slapping Luke’s shoulder and whispering as though he were unaware that Dean was right there in the room. “ _Alors, enfin Luke! ton p’tit kiwi!_ ” Mikael, a huge man with a russian sounding surname, sat back down at his computer but kept glancing at Dean as though he had interrupted a fine meal. And Pierre, an incredibly fit looking man with dark hair and a curling mustache, reminded Dean of a ringleader at a circus. All he lacked were the top hat and coattails. With overly done dramatic flair he grasped Dean by the shoulders and sat him down in an armchair and began to speak to him in slow broken English.

“So, Monsieur Dean! Do. yoo. liyeeke. Parees?”  
“Yes, it’s a beautiful city.”  
“Ah, magnifique!” Pierre slaps his own knee and turns to others as though Dean has passed a tremendously important test.

Jed smirks. Luke winces. Mikael types.

“And. I. hear. Yoo. went. to thee. veeeeery top of the Tour Eiffel! Yehs?”  
“Um. Yes we did, yes.”  
“And. you. Had some. Trouble?”  
Jed chuckles. Dean looks at Luke, who has the decency to cast his eyes down.

Luke told them about that?

  
“I did.” Dean attempts to change the subject, switching to French and hoping he is fluent enough not to make an even further spectacle of himself. “ _So what services does your company provide?_ ”

Pierre’s eyebrows hit his hairline and he jumps up and begins speaking a streak of french so fast and so full of idioms that Dean barely comprehends him. He seems pleased, though, shaking Luke with both hands and pointing and gesturing towards Dean as though he has just that moment hung the moon.

Jed is taken with a laughing fit so consuming that he barely speaks for the rest of their visit. Mikael smiles and keeps typing.

  
As they take their leave, Luke tugs Dean close and rumbles into his hair. “Pierre is an idiot. I’m so sorry.”

Dean smiles and shakes it off. But privately, he has no idea what to make of Luke’s friends. And he really doesn’t fancy spending any more time with them if it can be helped.

\----------------------------------------

Dean arrives at Luke’s apartment door and lets himself in. It’s dark, outside and inside both. There are no new texts from Luke.

Luke’s flat has two bedrooms, one bath, a kitchen and living room area. The decor is art deco. The first time Dean walked in he thought he had traveled back through time into 1943. Somehow the metal sided chairs and couch with their plastified cushions co exist with the tall 18th century style windows and their grand wooden slatted shutters and flower boxes full of geraniums.

He curls up in the only comfortable bit of couch by the open window and calls his mum.

_Yes, he is home and safe._   
_Yes, they closed the schools._   
_Yes, they have plenty of toilet paper and the fridge and pantry are well stocked. (This may be a lie. Dean will have to check later)_   
_No, he does not have a fever and he is not coughing._   
_Yes, Luke is right there and he is just fine. (that is an outright lie. Dean bows his head and blushes over that one.)_   
_Yes, he will be careful. He will stay inside, and wear a mask if he goes out._   
_Yes, 6 feet, he knows that._

_Love you, mum. Give dad and Brett my love, too._

Dean ends the call, and turns out the lights in the room. It is 9:05 pm.

Luke finally sends him a text.

“ _Staying at office tonight. Are you all right?_ ”

Dean answers the way he always does. “ _yes Luke. no worries._ ”

He sighs. 9:15 pm.

A light pierces the darkness in the large window facing his across the narrow Parisian street. Dean smiles, and huddles lower. The match flame illuminates a pale chiseled face with plush lips tight around a steadied cigarette. The light catches at the folds of a white T shirt and muscular forearm before the tip of the white paper cylinder lights and glows as the man’s breath oxygenates it. Smoke puffs out gently, carding its way through thick black curls. The glowing cigarette and its owner move through the room and lower to a piano bench, and Dean can just make out the young shoulders that hunch over the keys before a simple but pure rendition of “A train” glides into the darkness to settle into Dean’s senses like a soothing mental compress.

Dean folds his arms across his chest, and settles in to listen.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> My elementary school Principal was the model for "Pierre". Yes, this person actually existed. Harmless but nauseating. That's what I was trying to convey.
> 
> Jed Brophy (Nori) and Mikael Persbrant (Beorn) complete the set of Luke's friends.
> 
> Hope you enjoyed. Stay cool and well!


	3. Heathcliff?

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Dean remembers his first encounter with his neighbor across the street.

The first time Dean takes any notice of his neighbor across the street occurred a few weeks into the school term. Luke had worked very late that night, and Dean found himself alone in the flat on a warm Paris evening, with his planning and grading finished, and nothing really to do except retire.

He’d washed his dinner dishes and turned out the lights in the great room, and was just trying to decide whether or not to close the enormous windows when he heard piano music filtering in from outside. The window just opposite from his, perhaps twenty feet away across the street, is wide open. A baby grand stands caddy corner to it so that Dean can see the young man playing it. A brass candelabra with three burning candles illuminates his face. His eyes look downwards in intense concentration, his unruly black curls partially obscure his face. His hands are not visible but his shoulders and upper arms rise and fall and flex as the artist’ fingers find chords and rollings of single notes in a strange piece that Dean doesn’t recognize. It lacks a melody, but the chords radiate confidently through the evening air in a progression that seems to be a story seeking out a plot. Dean begins to realize that this is because the musician is composing it this moment, playing what comes to his mind with no sheet music to guide him.

Fascinated, Dean settles lower onto the couch under his own open window. The man’s eyes close tightly, his brows lower, and his lips open slightly. It confuses Dean that instead of the music gaining power and closure, the notes appear to stumble, then regroup, then stumble again. The man’s chest heaves as though the music has become a huge effort. His expression seems pained, and Dean is surprised at the strength of his own empathy. He remembers feeling that frustration in his writing, when the next lines of a story were stubbornly eluding him. But it’s more than that. Dean realizes to his shame that he kind of wants to wrap his arms around this guy.

But suddenly the man changes from a brooding Heathcliff to smiling pure sunshine. He throws his head back and gasps, and it becomes clear that the emotions contorting the beautiful man’s face in the opposite flat had less to do with musical composition and far more to do with a second young man’s tousled head appearing from between his legs.

Dean ducks down, mortified. He certainly hadn’t intended to intrude on anything private. He hears their voices now, low and tinged with warmth, and just loud enough for Dean to catch pieces of what they are saying.

Whatever has occurred is not over. One voice, the deeper, drier one seems to be directing and then berating the other one-

_No, No! Ollie! not on my keyboard._

_Over here then._

_God damned…..Exibitionist…._

Dean can’t stand it. He knows he shouldn’t, but he can’t keep from looking. He peers over the top of the couch.

Three floors up from the street, “Heathcliff” has “Ollie” pressed up against the sill of his open window, their bodies still illuminated by candlelight. The sill covers them from the waist down. Ollie’s shirt hangs open and his hands grip the vertical and horizontal sides of the window as the man behind him grips him and grinds slowly into him. “Heathcliff’s” profile is turned into Ollie’s ear and his mouth speaks steadily while one hand caresses his lover’s stomach.

There is enough ambient light in the street for Dean to see every detail. Both men are young and lean, and have the sort of chiseled but delicate facial features that express each sensation they feel down to the last molecule. Dean is getting hard just watching their faces. Ollie’s dark head is thrown back and he occasionally lets out gasps and what are certainly a string of curse words, particularly when the man behind him increases the frequency of his ministrations, and lowers his mouth to sink his teeth into Ollie’s shoulder.

_Gods._

Dean can tell the moment "Heathcliff" comes, even from twenty feet away, even though the man doesn’t make a sound.

Ollie is less discreet.

To Dean’s horror, this attracts the attention of a gendarme in the street below. A bright light suddenly envelops the two blissed out young men and the electronically modified voice that fills the air stabs into Dean’s awareness like the unexpected death of a major character.

“Fuck!” yells Heathcliff. He yanks Ollie down into the apartment out of site as Ollie’s laughter cackles up behind the piano.

**“Que es qui ce passe la haut??”**

After a brief moment in which Dean hears distant shuffling and a deep voice chastising a higher pitched giggling one, “Heathcliff" appears on the windowsill. His arms fold over each other, his shirt is buttoned, his collar is straight, and his head tilts curiously down at the policemen with an air of unforced innocence.

_“Good evening officers. Is there a problem?”_

  
**_“We had another complaint, Monsieur Turner. Too much noise.”_ **

  
_“I am so sorry. I was recording and my vocalist overdid his crescendo.”_

  
Another burst of laughter burbles up from behind the piano.

  
**_“You must control this noise, Turner. This is not nice for your Great Aunt.”_ **

  
A flash of regret crosses the young musician’s face.

  
_“Yes of course, I understand. I am so sorry to have disturbed anyone.”_

  
**_“Next time we file a report. Bonsoir, Monsieur Turner.”_ **

  
_“Yes, bonsoir.”_

The lights are lowered and the police move on. This seems to signal other people who had been watching from their own windows to begin sharing their reactions to the situation. A few sound irritated, one female voice in particular uses several French expletives. But many are catcalling and one even sings a snippet from an Edith Piaf song.

“Non, rien de rien!!! Non, je ne regrette rien!!!”  
  


Ollie rights himself and comes up behind the musician, his face glowing and whispering in the other man’s ear as “Monsieur Turner” huffs and bows his head, shaking it back and forth and allowing his dark curls to hide his face. But Dean can still see the displeased upturn of his mouth.

“Ca c’est envoyer, Turner!” calls someone from a ledge above Dean.

  
“Oui, c’est bon. C’est ca. Nous allons retirer maintenant.” says Turner, Ollie's face buried in his neck.

  
“Excellent “crescendo” les jeunes!” another caller adds.

Turner looks up at the caller and smiles, holding a hand to his chest and wishing his neighbors a good night. It’s then, when Ollie is disappearing into the darkness of that opposing apartment, when the young musician’s eyes finally seem to settle directly onto Dean.

All this time Dean had not been able to look away. Something about the dark musician, the curve of his shoulders, the intensity of his eyes, the outward easiness that clearly masks a fiery inner temperament, all obvious in the drama that just unfolded before him, has Dean’s attention.

And now that attention is abruptly returned.

"Turner, or “Heathcliff”, or whoever he is, looks directly at him. Luke’s flat is dark but he realizes the ambient light from the street shines on his face sufficiently for the other man to see him. The expression he receives is complex. Eyes narrow, eyebrows lower, but the corners of the man’s lips pull back in a strange smile. Dean’s own face feels like it has frozen solid into an expression of shock that will never thaw.

The other man’s smile broadens, and Dean’s stomach does a little swoop. And then the man salutes Dean, his hand doing a spinning dance from his forehead down to his knees, as he steps lightly back from his window and disappears into the darkness of the flat across the street.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Que es qui ce passe la haut?? = what's going on up there?  
> Non, rien de rien!!! Non, je ne regrette rien!!! = I regret nothing  
> Ca c’est envoyer! = well played  
> Oui, c’est bon. C’est ca. Nous allons retirer maintenant. = Yes, OK, we are going to retire now.  
> Excellent “crescendo” les jeunes! = nicely done, young ones!

**Author's Note:**

> Pedig edhellen? = Do you speak Elvish?  
> Mae govannen! = well met!
> 
> Ah merde. = oh shit.  
> Quelle Affair! = what a business!  
> sans soucie = without a care


End file.
